LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



CRUCIFIXION 



JOHN H, OSBORNE 



WOLCOTT & WEST 
SYRACUSE, N. Y. 
1897 



Copyright 1897, 
By John H. Osborne. 




preface* 



It must be apparent to every one carefully 
reading the accounts of our Saviour's cruci- 
fixion, that many of the incidents have never 
been explained with completeness, nor in a 
manner consistent with what we know con- 
cerning the reasons and grounds for crucifix- 
ion as practiced by the Romans. Among 
other incidents, the following, viz: the three 
different kinds of drink of which " vinegar " 
was the basis, the method of affixing the 
body to the cross by three or four nails, the 
breaking the legs of the victim, the spear- 
thrust in the side, have all been treated by 
many writers during these eighteen centuries, 
who have for the greater part accepted 
in succession, each from precursors, the 
same explanations of them, which, from the 
first, could have been founded only on con- 
jecture ; therefore, if we would not now pro- 



ceed upon the same course of mere assump- 
tion, we must find adequate explanation of 
them mainly in the modes and customs of 
Roman military punishment. 

It is through reasonable inferences drawn 
from such customs, and particularly from one 
principle well established in Roman state and 
military policy, that the attempt at a fairly 
probable and consistent solution is proposed 
in the following pages. 



J. H. 0. 



Auburn, N. Y. 




Contents. 



Preface, 3 

The Roman Method of Crucifixion, 7 
The Crucifixion of Jesus, . . .47 
Reflections, 78 



Ube IRoman /IDetbofc of Crucifixion* 



It is singular that so little should ever have 
been certainly and definitely known regard- 
ing this, the most cruel and shameful punish- 
ment inflicted by the Romans. And yet, on 
reflection, it will not appear so very strange, 
since we know that detailed and minute de- 
scriptions of the modes of punishment for 
criminals have never occupied any prominent 
place in the popular literature of any time or 
country. In our own day, for instance, with 
so much activity in every field of knowledge, 
the method and machinery used in the capital 
punishment of hanging are known in their 
details to very few ; even when some notable 
criminal is put to death, the daily press (and 
very properly) seldom gives any elaborate 
description of the apparatus employed, and 
the general public is content to know that 
in accordance with the sentence pronounced 



7 



TUB ROMAN METHOD 

by the judge at the close of his trial, the 
culprit was " hanged by the neck until he 
was dead." If hanging were universally 
abolished today, it may be doubted whether, 
in eighteen hundred or even in five hundred 
years from now, there would be found ac- 
counts of the apparatus and process any less 
fragmentary or more definite than those we 
have today in regard to crucifixion as prac- 
ticed in the time of our Saviour. 

It must be remembered that the cross was 
not represented as an emblem of our salva- 
tion during the first 325 years of the Chris- 
tian era; it was an abominable and detested 
thing, as the gallows is now, a symbol of 
shame and slavery; and therefore, until the 
time of Constantine, who was the first Ro- 
man emperor to embrace the Christian relig- 
ion, there would be no endeavor made by 
Roman, Jewish or Christian writer to pre- 
serve any account of this dread process for 
the infliction of death. The little we may 
know about it is to be gathered from writ- 



8 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

ings in which mention must be made of it 
from necessity, and only by allusion and as 
related in an illustrative way to some other 
topic forming the principal subject of the 
writing. 

The apostle Paul frequently alludes to the 
cross as a symbol of shame and speaks of the 
offence (sfcdvSaXov) of the cross ; and it must 
have been with great horror, loathing and 
disgust that any unconverted man should 
read about Paul's glorying in the cross of 
Jesus Christ, and that he rejoiced in being 
daily crucified with his Lord. To a Roman of 
polished but pagan education, such declara- 
tions would appear as the extreme aberra- 
tions of a disordered brain, and Paul would 
readily be reckoned as among those intellect- 
ual cranks to any one of whom a Festus 
might exclaim, " Thou art beside thyself, much 
learning hath made thee mad.' ' 

There were some incidents attending our 
Saviour's crucifixion, explanations of which 
have been offered by writers in commentaries 



9 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



and cyclopedias, but they are not at all satis- 
factory, because they do not account for 
those incidents consistently and in harmony 
with what we know of Roman policy and 
practice in military executions. Two of these 
incidents are: first, the offer of vinegar 
mingled with gall to Jesus when on the 
cross as well as before He was crucified ; and 
secondly, the breaking the legs of the cruci- 
fied at the time of their being taken down 
from the cross. The very inadequate ex- 
planation of these proceedings is, that they 
were both acts of mercy ; that the vinegar 
and gall, or, as named in another place, the 
wine mingled with myrrh, was given in order 
to partly dull the senses or to stupefy the 
victim and thus to lessen the pain ; and that 
the legs were broken as a closing act of the 
scene in order to hasten death and thus the 
termination of his misery. 

These explanations are not admissible, and 
simply for the reason that thus the period of 
suffering would be shortened, and they con- 



10 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

travene the fact that crucifixion was prac- 
ticed in order that the sufferings of the vic- 
tim should be as intense and prolonged as 
possible. It was a military punishment as at 
first practiced by the Romans, and had its 
origin in military necessity. Roman policy, 
as exercised toward the states that were to 
be subjugated, was essentially a policy of 
terror; "Vaevictis! woe to the conquered !" 
was the terrible cry that sounded forth be- 
fore their armies as they entered upon the 
bloody work of battle and destruction, and 
the captives taken were in greater part ap- 
pointed to death in such manner as would 
best serve to terrify the people and make 
them willing, through abject fear, to pass 
under the Roman yoke. 

Thus the death by crucifixion, as will appear 
further on in this paper, was the most cruel 
that could be devised ; but it would have been 
most contradictory to the spirit in which that 
punishment was inflicted, and would have re- 
vealed a broad inconsistency in the procedure, 

ii 



THB ROMAN METHOD 



if at any stage the element of mercy had en- 
tered to relieve, in never so slight a degree, 
its bitter and protracted suffering. For it 
was an infliction carefully so ordered that 
the body of the victim should not be attached 
at any vital point while he was kept slowly 
dying " by inches " under the agonies of star- 
vation and thirst. The sufferer was held for 
days under the tortures of this living death, 
unless at times he was fortunately rendered 
unconscious of his pains by the delirium that 
accompanied the hard fever and slight loss of 
blood from the wounds in his hands and feet. 
Men of fairly strong constitution lasted out 
this bitter experience during from three to 
eight days ; the instance recorded of longest 
survival being nine days ; while with the 
case of a weak or sickly frame the wretched 
scene might close within the first twenty-four 
or forty-eight hours, but seldom in less than 
the time first mentioned. 

Our Lord's death came when He had been 
on the cross but six hours, and it is one of the 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

objects of this and another paper to show 
why it should have come so soon. The ma- 
terial contributed by the records is so scanty 
and vague as to serve merely for a frame work 
on which to build up our complete account, 
such as would be furnished by the inferences 
fairly to be drawn from the extant records of 
military custom and state policy. That ac- 
count should proceed upon fair and natural de- 
ductions made legitimately from known facts 
of history and custom ; thus may we, haply, 
make out a rounded and complete story in 
which there shall be place for all necessary 
facts and incidents related in the Gospel nar- 
rative, and each of them shall fall without 
design into its own place as forming a con- 
sistent and natural part in the whole sad 
tragedy. 

Nearly fifty years ago the discovery of the 
outermost planet of our solar system was 
made by a French mathematician, who com- 
puted the elements of an unknown wander- 
ing body whose influence had for a long time 



i-3 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

been a source of perplexity to astronomers ; 
by his advice the telescope was on a specified 
night turned to a certain point in the heavens, 
where his calculations had led him to believe 
that a planet was to be found ; there, in fact, 
it was, and then for the first time was it 
entered on astronomers' charts as one of the 
glorious array constituting our planetary 
system. May we not, therefore, somewhat 
after the same manner, and with a fair pro- 
portion of the essential elements at hand, 
construct an account of a Roman crucifixion 
that, being in harmony with all known facts, 
and having all its parts established as true 
by fact or true by fair inference, each of them 
shall have such just and proper relation to 
all other parts as shall commend the whole 
to our understanding as an acceptable and 
fully credible representation of a crucifixion 
scene ? 

As Agassiz, the naturalist, having the scale 
of a fossil fish before him, might construct 
all of its body again from tip to tail, and 



14 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

from that reconstructed form make a true 
statement of its habits and habitat; as 
Cuvier, from the tarsal bone of a bird ages ago 
extinct, might render a complete account of 
its form and manner of life; so may we, 
doubtless, from the records, few and scanty 
though they be, construct an account that 
will be true, because of the harmony there 
will be between all related facts and all the in- 
ferences which "by good and necessary con- 
sequence may be deduced therefrom." 

It may be again stated, since the fact is a 
controlling one and too important to be lost 
sight of for a moment, that the policy and 
usage of Rome in her treatment of every na- 
tion and tribe subdued to her arms was un- 
varyingly that of the utmost cruelty; and 
that cruelty was continued in practice until 
nation, tribe or people had become so com- 
pletely overawed and reduced that no hope or 
thought remained to them of opposition to 
Roman sway. When a Roman general, upon 
his invasion of a country, had fought a battle 



15 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

and gained a victory, he had a large number 
of captives, both of those taken from the de- 
feated army and of the unarmed dwellers in 
cities and villages near the battlefield. They 
were all different in class and various in con- 
dition, and at the absolute disposal of the 
victor. 

With the end of subjugation in view, 
there was no exchange of prisoners, neither 
could the captives be allowed to go free. 
There thus remained for them the fate of 
either slavery or death ; and the only problem 
before the general was, how to so assort 
them that those best fitted by education, by 
trade or other adaptation, could be made 
useful as slaves in Rome. Such were reserved 
for the slave market there, and the remaining 
mass of captives, and generally the far greater 
part, were made useful to Roman policy in 
subjugating the country by being put to the 
slow tortures of starvation ; for after long 
experience in various sorts of military pun- 
ishment it had been found that this was the 



x6 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

most agonizing and protracted method of 
torment in all the repertory of cruelty. 

For the purpose, therefore, of securing the 
doomed men during the days of gnawing hun- 
ger, when in desperation they might use any ex- 
treme violence to escape its agonies, the most 
simple and obvious method was to bind each 
of them by cords or withes to a tree or post ; 
and thus for the great herd of the condemned 
a wide space near the camp was reserved in 
which, in addition to the trees growing there, 
holes were dug for countless posts ; each post 
was set up by two out of a party of four sol- 
diers detailed to crucify a victim ; the other 
two soldiers passed with the condemned man 
to the nearest wood or to the ruined houses 
of some village to obtain the cross bar to be 
affixed at the top of the post or at a suitable 
height on the living tree, they also provided 
themselves with ropes or green withes with 
which to suspend the man from the cross bar; 
he bore the cross thus provided for his own exe- 
cution, for the indolent and merciless soldiers 
compelled him. 

17 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



After they had returned in this manner 
to the place in the field where the upright 
post had been already set by other cap- 
tives under direction of the other two sol- 
diers, the cross bar was securely fixed at 
the top and then two short stakes of equal 
length were prepared. These were made with 
the upper end " square across," and with the 
lower end sharpened, and were driven into 
the ground close beside and nearly in front of 
the upright post, — being separated from each 
other by a little space. The tops of these 
stakes were from six to eighteen inches from 
the ground, and on these the victim was 
forced to stand, a foot on each stake, while 
the four at once attached the cords around 
his body, and fastened them over the cross 
bar close to the upright, so that when the 
stakes had been taken from under his feet the 
body hung suspended by the cords or withes. 
It was then but a short task to drive a nail 
through each hand and foot so that the poor 
wretch might be thoroughly secured against 



18 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

any hope of escape ; for if left without this 
nailing, the arms and hands might be readily 
used for untying the cords that suspended 
him and so escape would be easy during the 
darkness of the night. 

Let us now call attention to the absurdities 
in the representations of crucifixion offered to 
us by the religious artists of Christendom in 
the hundreds of paintings and sculptures in 
the galleries of the Old World. The cross is 
nearly always made of such height that the 
victim on it is elevated with his feet almost 
or quite above the head of one standing on 
the ground near by. For the earlier events, 
the cross is shown laid on the ground already 
completed, with the victim extended upon it 
and the soldiers are driving nails through 
hands and feet ; next after this is the scene 
where they are raising up the cross with the 
condemned man thus attached only by the 
nails, to set it in the hole prepared for it. 
Now all this, while highly pathetic and poetic, 
is wholly and absurdly improbable and it 



19 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

might be said impossible. We cannot follow 
our imaginative painters in these scenes nor 
accept their presentation of them as suffi- 
ciently authoritative in the case ; for they had 
no more reliable accounts of the processes in 
crucifixion than we of this day have. 

The stolid brutes who composed the mass of 
amercenary Roman army did not, we may be 
quite sure, perform any of their tasks with an 
eye to the picturesque, the pathetic or the 
poetic. The lazy and degraded creatures 
went through their work only to do what 
was actually necessary for the end in view. 
They would not make the upright post any 
longer than would suffice to raise the victim's 
feet a little from the ground ; and for this pur- 
pose a height of six or twelve inches would be 
as good as six feet. They would not first at- 
tach the cross-bar before setting the upright 
post because, as they had other condemned 
men in their charge to crucify, they would 
make use of them in setting the upright post 
while others of their own party were looking 



20 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

up the cross-bar. The rough hewing of a 
notch or "revet" at the top of a post could 
be done before it was set in the hole, and the 
bar when brought could be quickly nailed in 
the notch. Nor would they give themselves 
the needless trouble and delay of completing 
the cross and attaching the victim while it 
lay prone on the ground and then raising it 
all to be set and steadied in the hole till se- 
cured by the filled-in earth. 

A soldier of any age or country is notori- 
ous for exercising his wits to make himself 
comfortable and avoid every species of labor 
consistent with the performance of his duty, 
and we may be confident that every crucifix- 
ion was performed with strict regard to econ- 
omy of labor, and not with the least reference 
to artistic effect. A climax of absurdity is 
reached when a modern commentator declares 
that the soldiers raised up the cross with the 
victim on it and then allowed it to drop into 
the hole with a heavy thud (!) that it might 
produce greater pain where the nails passed 

21 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

through the sensitive limbs ! Where did our 
wise expositor learn that ? 

There is also another far greater absurdity 
in representing the sufferer as attached to the 
cross only by the nails through hands and 
feet. The crucifix in art with but very few 
exceptions has this utterly inept presentation ; 
for a moment's consideration must suffice to 
show how ill-fitting it must have been to the 
actual facts of the case. It would be imprac- 
ticable for any man to maintain the posture 
represented by this figure on the crucifix of 
art, stretched symmetrically upright, the 
body in its whole length kept parallel with 
the upright post, the shoulders at nearly a 
level with the cross-bar, the arms stretched 
out along the bar at nearly right angles to 
the body, and thus the whole weight made 
to rest on the one or two nails through the 
feet. It would be impossible for any human 
being by the utmost exercise of muscle and 
will to maintain such a position for even six 
minutes, not to say for six hours or days. To 



22 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

declare that he could do this is to go directly 
against all that we know concerning the 
limits of human endurance or persistence. 
The legs could not be thus extended and kept 
on the tense stretch ; they would be very soon 
bent outward at the knees so as to let the 
body downward and forward, and it would 
then be held and practically supported by the 
nails through the hands; by this a great 
weight would be brought upon the two small 
carpal bones of the hand where the nails 
passed between them, and upon the fine and 
lax ligaments uniting them at the first knuckle, 
and it would be entirely too great for them to 
sustain ; the delicate bones would be broken 
and the ligaments ruptured; by this means 
the wound would be so opened and enlarged 
as to allow the passage of the nail-head 
through it, the arm would then be released 
and the victim would fall from the cross. 

More than this, accounts all agree that 
after the doomed man had been on the cross 
for twenty-four or thirty-six hours, exposed 



23 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

to a burning sun by day and to the chilling 
damps of night, to rain or cold, there came a 
raging fever and a violent delirium ; in the 
unconsciousness attending these attacks the 
body must have been subject to pitiable 
writhings and contortions, and unless held by 
some securer means than nails through the 
delicate structures of hands and feet, it would 
surely be loosened and fall. In some cases 
there was a wooden pin driven into the post 
about midway to serve as a kind of seat to 
bear up nearly all the weight of the body ; 
but this does not relieve the difficulty, for the 
upper part of the body would still be free to 
writhe and sway about to a degree sufficient 
to effect its release from the nails in the hands; 
the wooden pin at the middle would also 
serve as a fulcrum, by means of which the 
arms and legs, as powerful levers, would, in 
the convulsive throes of a delirious state, cer- 
tainly and quickly tear the hands and feet 
from their fastenings. From all these consid- 
erations we are well warranted in concluding 



24 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

that other means than the three or four nails 
were of necessity used in keeping the body at- 
tached to the cross. 

And here it is pertinent for every one to in- 
quire, Whence, then, did the unpractical 
artists obtain the notion of nails as the only 
means? The answer is not far to seek; it 
was through a misconception of the exact 
meaning of the passage in John xx. 25. Our 
artists were devout men, and were, as they 
thought, guided strictly by the words of the 
Divine Book, and since, in the only place 
where mention is made of any of the instru- 
ments of crucifixion, the nails alone are allu- 
ded to, the painters forthwith concluded that 
these were exclusively the means used for at- 
tachment to the cross. But Thorn as ' declar- 
ation was made not for the purpose of set- 
ting forth an exhaustive description of the 
method of crucifixion, but for another and 
entirely different purpose ; he was seeking for 
evidence of the identity of the body of this 
man, alleged to be that of Jesus, with the 



25 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

body of his Master whom he knew they had 
applied to the cross, and he sought for that 
evidence in the marks that could be left by 
only one class of the instruments of crucifix- 
ion, namely, the nails. Thomas did not add, 
" Except I shall also see on His body the red 
marks left by the ropes that suppported Him, 
I will not believe; " Thomas knew better than 
to say that, for it was now the eleventh day 
since Jesus had been suspended by the ropes, 
and during eight days of those eleven the 
blood had been coursing through His revived 
body, all the functions of life were again in 
full and vigorous exercise, and the red marks 
made by the ropes had therefore disappeared. 
It was a strange error for artists to adopt 
summarily the conclusion that the sole men- 
tion by Thomas of the nails implied the sole 
use of them as the affixive appliances for the 
crucifixion of our Lord. 

Thus with close adherence to all elements of 
the practical, and also of the probable, where- 
ever statements of fact have failed in this 



26 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

study of our subject, we find that the conclu- 
sions of the cyclopedists need to be modified 
by the substitution of one little word for 
another little one; they all agree that the vic- 
tim was affixed by ropes or nails, it needs 
that " and " be put in place of " or," and then 
the statement, by ropes and nails will be in 
accord with what was the fact in every in- 
stance. The weight of the sufferer being thus 
wholly borne by the ropes or withes which 
held him suspended, we may consider in what 
manner and by what portions of the body he 
could be hung so as best to fulfil the object 
for which he was crucified; for it may be 
again repeated that the purpose was to pro- 
long life to the utmost, that he might undergo 
the fullest measure of torment from starva- 
tion and thirst. 

During the long and frequent wars waged 
by Rome, and with the constant practice of 
this mode of torture in her continued and un- 
varying course of conquest, the Roman sol- 
diers in crucify ing their thousands of captives? 



27 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



must have become adepts in the art. Con- 
stant opportunities for observation would 
teach them that victims suspended by certain 
portions of the body would survive much 
longer than when suspended by other por- 
tions; they would find that where a red 
swelling came in consequence of stricture by 
the rope, there heat and fever would occur, 
the inflammation would be followed by sup- 
puration and mortification, and then by a gan- 
grene which would all too quickly terminate 
the sufferer's life. 

We of this day know that if any of the 
limbs had been bound by the ropes for sus- 
pension, there would have been a stoppage of 
the circulation of the blood and then would 
have ensued the consequences just above 
stated; the soldiers, of course, knew nothing 
about the circulation of the blood, but ex- 
perience acquired from repeated observation 
would ere long indicate to them by what 
parts suspension could be made so as to per- 
mit of longest duration of life; manifestly, 



28 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

then, the method concluded on would be, as 
the man stood on the two stakes at the foot 
of the post and with his back against it, to 
pass the rope around the waist and just un- 
der the ribs, then tie it with a hard knot mod- 
erately tight, leaving the knot at the middle 
of his back, then the two ends of the rope, 
being long enough, were passed over the 
cross-bar close to its junction with the post, 
and a turn or two around the post would 
make all secure ; then the nails through hands 
and feet would prevent any violent movement 
of the body, and particularly would keep the 
hands from any attempt to untie the rope. 
Held in such wise, there would be pressure ex- 
erted by the sufferer's weight only on the soft 
and yielding viscera of the abdomen, on the 
ribs and other framework near to the ex- 
terior, but no constriction could be brought 
on any large vein or artery to cause obstruc- 
tion or hindrance to the circulatory flow. 

After such simple methods were the doomed 
men prepared for their horrible fate ; and to 



29 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



the number of hundreds, sometimes of thou- 
sands, they were set up on crosses without 
the camp. Josephus relates that at the siege 
of Jerusalem by Titus there could not be 
found wood enough to erect crosses for all the 
prisoners condemned to that death. The 
crucifixions were occasions of rare sport for 
the degraded soldiery; they gloried in the 
mockery, the jibes and insults that could be 
freely flung into the faces of the condemned ; 
in the hearts of such men, unsoftened by any 
influence of Christian civilization, were har- 
bored no feelings of pity or mercy, their 
words, albeit often in a language unknown 
to those on the cross, were yet sufficiently in- 
terpreted to the victims by glaring eyes and 
gestures of hate, and by acts of cruelty and 
brutality. 

During the days through which the sufferers 
survived, their torments would be the sport 
and jest of the executioners, and when, from 
the loss of blood at the wounds, from the 
bitter pangs of hunger and thirst, and also 



30 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

from exposure to the scorching heat, a raging 
fever had come upon the victim by the second 
or third day, then the pleasure of the hard- 
ened brutes was greatest ; they gloated over 
the pitiable throes and convulsions, and took 
delight in the groans, shrieks and curses of 
the hapless sufferers. So through the long 
drawn hours of every day did their besotted 
natures find interest and entertainment in 
the hard wretchedness of the crucified; 
through the day indeed, but not through the 
night. For then came the soldiers' time for 
sleep, and no sleep was possible if these awful 
cries from the field of torment near to camp 
came to fill their ears; for the delirium and 
fever would not end with the day but continue 
unrelieved through the hours of night. The 
cries must be stopped during the night if the 
soldier would have his rest undisturbed, there- 
fore some means must be provided for closing 
the mouths and hushing the voices of these 
raging men. 
An infernal drink was made whose corrosive 



31 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



and astringent qualities admirably served 
this purpose ; a vinegar of scarifying acidity 
that resulted from the acetous fermentation 
of a strong wine, received a strong admixture 
of gall, a vegetable product; and this, when 
administered in such scant quantity on a 
bunch of hyssop as to just moisten the mouth 
and throat, hotly parched and swollen to 
great tenderness as they were, would by its 
irritating and rasping influence corrugate and 
constrict the throat and paralyse the vocal 
cords. So with a pail of the mixture and 
with hyssop tied at the end of a stick, the 
watch specially detailed at night for this 
duty, passed everywhere among the groves of 
crosses, offering the vile stuff to every one 
they heard crying out ; and eagerly was the 
little sop received ; for it was at least, moist- 
ure, — a semblance of the pure drink they were 
longing and moaning for ; but the next mo- 
ment came the hard gripe of acid and gall, in- 
creasing their suffering, closing the throat and 
almost stopping the breath. Thus was quiet 



32 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

secured for the night by the guard furnished 
with vessels of vinegar mingled with gall, 
until the daybreak came and the awakening 
of the camp, when these duties were no longer 
required, and the victims resumed their 
mournful cries as one by one they recovered 
from the effects of the bitter mixture. 

So through the days of suffering and nights 
of horror when even the poor relief of a cry 
was denied them, did the heavy hours of tor- 
ture pass ; by the end of the second day many 
of those with weak constitutions would be 
relieved by death, others in greater number 
would succumb during the third, fourth and 
fifth days, by the sixth and seventh only those 
of greatest vitality would survive, and by the 
seventh or eighth day the last of them had 
passed away, all having been kept on their 
crosses till death. But what was to be done 
with those remaining alive, if, on any day be- 
fore the eighth, military policy or necessity re- 
quired the removal of the army ? They must 
not be released, nor must they be left to be 



33 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



rescued by friends and relatives and in a con- 
dition to be nursed back to life and health 
after the army had withdrawn ; nor, on the 
other hand, should their torment be brought 
to a merciful end by a spear thrust in some 
vital part, but some way must be devised for 
rendering the short remnant of their lives still 
a prolonged misery even after their rescue by 
friends when the army had gone. 

Such a way was found ; just before depart- 
ure, the guard with clubs passed among the 
crosses, and whenever the doomed one on any 
of them gave signs of life, a blow on each leg 
broke the bones, and so the poor wretch, even 
if delivered and restored to freedom, was for- 
ever a helpless cripple from the compound 
fractures of his legs. There was little surgi- 
cal skill among those barbarous peoples to 
amend so great a disaster ; the victim must 
suffer on till death, his only comfort being in 
the sympathy and alleviating cares rendered 
at the hands of his friends. 

The offering of the vinegar and gall and the 



34 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

leg-breaking have both, in the absence of pos- 
itive knowledge on the subject, been wrongly 
interpreted as acts of mercy ; the drink, it is 
asserted, was intended as a stupefying potion 
to dull the pain by taking away in whole or 
in part the consciousness of the victim ; and 
the breaking of the legs it is said, was for the 
purpose of hastening death and so giving 
quicker relief to the intolerable suffering ; but 
such theories are wholly inconsistent with the 
policy of utmost cruelty practiced by the 
Romans. To have rendered any one insensible 
to pain or suffering would have been to defeat 
the very object in view when he was attached 
to the cross ; and if there had been any real 
purpose to shorten the misery of the wretched 
men, a spear thrust into the heart would 
have effected that result much sooner and 
more surely than the leg-breaking. And fur- 
ther, no stupefying effect could be produced 
by the vinegar and gall, indeed, it would have 
a result entirely the opposite ; and breaking 
the legs would not necessarily hasten death; 



35 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



it might in some case accidentally happen 
that some small and sharp slivers from the 
broken bone might be driven through the wall 
of the femoral artery or femoral vein, and so 
death would immediately result. Doubtless 
this happened in the case of the penitent 
thief, and so the promise of our Lord to him 
would be fulfilled, " Today shalt thou be with 
me in Paradise." But yet the men who gave 
the blows knew nothing about arteries and 
veins, so that death by loss of blood in this 
way, being a mere contingency, we cannot 
conclude that such an end was calculated on 
or looked for by the executioners. 

As the soldiers detailed for this leg-breaking 
duty passed the doomed men in review, many 
would be found with life so nearly gone as to 
present almost the semblance of death; the 
exhausted body was still, the heart worn out 
by fever and pain, had nearly ceased to beat, 
or at least its throbs were so feeble as to send 
the blood slowly to the inner parts of the 
body, leaving the exterior so little colored by 



36 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

it as to induce belief that the pallor indicative 
of death had already come; so there was 
doubt whether the victim yet lived or might 
be only in a faint; that doubt was quickly 
and brutally solved by the thrust of a spear 
into his side; if blood in its natural state 
followed, the sufferer was yet living and his 
legs were broken ; but if no blood or if blood 
separated into white scrum and red fibrine as 
we of this day know it, came forth, he was 
dead, and the soldiers would not uselessly 
waste their strength in giving the unneces- 
sary blows with their clubs. 

In conclusion, we will quote a few passages 
from some of the ancient classics that throw 
some light on the practice of crucifixion. 

Plautus, Mostellaria, I. i. 52, etc. (Quarrel 

of two slaves in the house of an absent 

Athenian merchant, Grunio and Tuanio). 

" Grunio. 0, riddle for the executioner, as I 
guess it will turn out; they will be so pinking 
you with goads as you carry your gibbet 
someday along the streets, as soon as the old 
gentleman comes back. 



37 



THE ROMAN MBTHOD 

Tuanio. How do you know that fate will 
not happen to you sooner than to me ? 

Grunio. I never deserved it; you did, and 
do now." 

Here the word " gibbet' ' is derived from a 
Latin word meaning to spread out; it is a 
noun, the name of the transverse beam of a 
cross, holding fast the outstretched arms of 
the culprits. 

Cicero, Pro Rabirio, IV. 11. (On the in- 
iquity of crucifying a man who was a Roman 
citizen). 

" Which of us, then, Sabienus, is really the 
friend of the people ? You, who think that 
Roman citizens need to have the hangman at 
hand and handcuffs ready, even at a public 
meeting ; you, who order the cross to be fixed 
and set up for the death penalty of Roman 
citizens in the very Campus Martius, a spot 
consecrated by the Auguries, where the 
Comitia Centuriata are held? Or I, who 
forbid the meeting to be tainted by the ex- 
ecutioner's presence, who declare that the 
Forum of the Roman people must be 
cleansed from all traces of so infamous a 
crime, who would have the assembly pre- 
served untainted, the Campus sacred ground, 
the body of all the citizens of Rome undefiled, 



38 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

and who maintains that the right of liberty 
must be preserved intact ? 

"§12. Yes, this democratic tribune of the 
people is the guardian, then, the defender of 
our rights and liberties! The Porcian law 
abolished flogging for all Roman citizens; 
this tender-hearted creature brings the scourge 
back again. The Porcian law destroyed the 
power of the lictor over the liberty of a Ro- 
man citizen; Sabienus, the peopled friend, 
hands him over to the executioner. C. Grac- 
chus brought in a bill that no Roman citizen 
should be indicted on a capital charge with- 
out your consent ; yet this " democrat," with- 
out your consent, has compelled the two 
commissioners not (as was legal) to frame a 
decision concerning a man who was a Roman 
citizen, but to convict a Roman citizen on a 
capital charge without even a hearing. 

"§13. And yet you, you talk to me about 
the Porcian law, about Caius Gracchus, about 
the people's liberties, about friends of the 
people, forsooth ! you, who have attempted, 
not only by unwonted punishments but even 
in speeches of unheard of ferocity, to violate 
the liberty of this people, to make trial of 
their endurance, to change their customs ! 
This is the sort of thing that pleases you, 
who call yourself a merciful and " democratic' ' 
man ! " Go, lictor, bind his hands," a formula 
which not only does not belong to the present 
state of civilization, but was not even used 



39 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



by Romulus or Numa Pompilius ; the word- 
ing belongs to the tortures devised by that 
arrogant and cruel king, Tarquin. Doubtless 
a kind-hearted "democrat" like you can re- 
member them; ' ' Veil his head, hang him to 
the barren tree," words which, gentlemen of 
Rome, have long been lost for this state, not 
only in the twilight of antiquity, but in the 
light of liberty too. 

"§16. Now, if we must have death, let us 
die free men ; let there be no talk of hangmen 
and veiling heads ; let us get rid of the very 
name of the cross, not only from the whole 
body of Roman citizens, but from our eyes, 
our ears, our very thoughts. For it is not 
only the doing and the suffering of such 
things, but even the circumstances, the 
thought, the open reference to them are un- 
worthy of a Roman citizen, and a free man. 
Shall the generosity of masters free, with a 
single touch of the staff of manumission, 
their slaves from the dread of all such punish- 
ments and yet neither our past history, nor 
our achievements, nor the dignified posts 
which you fill, free us from the lash, from the 
hook, from the terror, even, of the cross." 

[The copyist who furnished the foregoing 

from Cicero remarks with entire truth, that 

Cicero is here guilty of special pleading for 

rhetorical purpose; — his vague allusions to 



40 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

Tarquin,the omission of the important word 
reste," by a rope," in the formula, Infelici 
arbori, etc.] 

Justinus the historian and annalist, XXII. 
vii. 8 and 9 (concerning Bomilcar the Carth- 
aginian who intended to desert to Agathocles 
the Sicilian tyrant). 

"§8. For this crime he was fastened to a 
cross-bar by the Carthaginians in the midst 
of the Forum, that the same spot which had 
formerly furnished a distinction for the good, 
might be a record of his punishment. 

" §9. But Bomiclar bore the cruelty of the 
citizens with a great heart; so that he in- 
veighed against the crime of the Carthagin- 
ians from the top of his cross as from a 
tribunal. 

"§ And when he had shouted these 
words to a great assembly of the people, he 
expired." 

Ansonius Idyllia VI. 54. (Crucifixion of 

Cupid in the infernal world.) 

u Trembling with fear and vainly seeking 
a refuge, they dragged him forth into the 
crowd in the midst of the throng. A 
well-known myrtle tree in a gloomy shade 
is chosen, detested through the punish- 
ment of the gods. There had Proser- 



41 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



pin a crucified Adonis, scorning him because 
mindful of Venus. Amor, hanging from a 
lofty branch of this tree, hands bound behind 
his back, bewailing the fetters shackling his 
soles, they torture with no mild punishment. 
A defendant without an indictment, a pris- 
oner condemned by no judge, — such was 
Amor." 

Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, IV. 19. (Two 
servants, Palaestrio and Sceledrus, are talk- 
ing scandal with the mistress of their master.) 

" Palaestrio. I think that in that self-same 
position you will have to die outside the 
gates, when with hands outstretched, you 
will be carrying your cross. (Sceledrus, the 
slave addressed, is standing at the moment 
before the door with arms stretched out to 
bar entry. The allusion to the "gate" is 
probably to the Esquiline or Rhetian gate at 
Rome, near the place where slaves were pun- 
ished.) 

Sceledrus. Don't threaten; I know the 
cross will (as a matter of course) be my end. 
There are all my ancestors, father, grand- 
father, grandsire, greatgrandsire. Enough; 
my eyes cannot be torn out by any threats of 
yours." 

Valerius Maximus, II. 7, 12. 

" Nothing could be more mild than the elder 
Africanus. Yet for the establishment of mili- 



42 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

tary discipline lie thought it convenient to bor- 
row something of severity from his own lenity. 
For having taken Carthage and gotten into 
his power all those that had fled from the Ro- 
mans to the Carthaginians, he more severely 
punished the Roman than the Latin fugitives. 
For the first, as deserters of their country, he 
nailed to the cross ; the other, as perfidious 
allies, he only beheaded. I shall not urge this 
act any further, both because it was Scipio's, 
and for that it is not fitting that a servile 
punishment should insult our Roman blood, 
though deservedly shed ; especially when we 
may pass to other relations not dipped in 
domestic gore." 

Seneca, Consolatio ad Marciam, xx. 3. 

"I see there crosses, not of one kind only, 
but constructed in one fashion by some, in 
another by others. Some have hung the vic- 
tims head downward to the earth, others 
have driven a stake through the entrails, 
others have stretched out the arms on the 
patibulum (cross-bar of the cross). I see 
cords, I see the lash, and separate engines (of 
torture) for the limbs and individual joints : 
but I also see death. There are blood-thirsty 
enemies, there are haughty citizens, but there 
too I see death. Slavery is not grievous if a 
man may at one step pass away into liberty 
when his master is weary of him ; as defence 
against the cruelties of life, I have the kind- 
ness of death." 



43 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

Lipsius de Cruce, II. 1. 

"Not without reason did Cicero call the 
cross 'a most cruel and loathsome death ' 
and the poet Nonnus terms it ' a most crim- 
inal fate.' Moreover lawyers speak of it, 
owing to its (evil) pre-eminence as the i ex- 
treme penalty.' " 

Paulus, Julius P. (A. D. circa 200) says : 

" They are all the extreme penalty, viz ; the 
cross. Ulpian calls it supreme: 'if the ac- 
cused are free, they are given to the wild 
beasts ; if slaves they suffer the supreme pen- 
alty.'" 

Certainly Paulus enumerates the three su- 
preme penalties in this order: "the cross, 
burning, beheading;" the cross, as you see, 
stands first ; and with reason, if you expect 
to find in such punishment disgrace, magni- 
tude, and especially long duration. 

Juvenal, Satire, VI. 219-223. (A slave is 

to be crucified for a mere whim ; he has done 

nothing to deserve it, but apparently that 

does not weigh with his owner.) 

" Prepare a cross for the slave. 
"What has the slave done to deserve his 
punishment ? 



44 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

" What witness is present ? Who has pros- 
ecuted ? 

" You shall hear. There is never a long de- 
lay in the case of a man's life. 

<4 0h, you idiot! is a slave a human being 
then? 

" He did nothing, I grant ; it is my will, and 
I give orders accordingly; such is my com- 
mand. 

" My desire may stand for a reason (if you 
require one)." 

Horace, Satires, I. iii. 80-83. 

4 4 Were a master to crucify his slave be- 
cause, when told to remove a dish, he licked 
up the half-eaten fish and the half-cold sauce, 
men in their senses would count him madder 
than Labeo." 

Horace lived nearly a century before 
Juvenal ; he reflects the disintegration of so- 
ciety, which had advanced with rapid strides 
under the vicious emperors since Horace's 
age. 

Plautus, Poenulus, IV. ii. (Syncerastus, a 

slave, is speaking of some treachery of his.) 

" If my master learns that I have breathed 
a word to a single mortal, he will have 
changed me from Syncerastus into a leg- 
broken object in double-quick time," 



45 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



Livy, I. 26, §6. 

" The law was worded in dire strains : ' Let 
two commissioners decide re per duell^.' If 
the defendant shall have appealed from their 
decision, the case shall be contested with 
them on the appeal ; if they shall prevail, the 
defendant shall veil his head and be hanged 
by a rope to a barren (that is, accursed) tree ; 
and he shall be scourged within and without 
the city's sacred limits. " 



46 



Uhc Crucifixion of Sesus* 



From the conclusions to be drawn from 
statements in another paper on the " Roman 
Method of Crucifixion/' it will appear that 
some new and interesting questions arise con- 
cerning certain facts and incidents attending 
the crucifixion of our Lord. The most strik- 
ing and important of these is the fact of His 
untimely death after He had been suspended 
but six hours on the cross ; other facts are : 
the unnatural darkness during the last three 
hours of His execution ; the earthquake ; the 
opening of the graves of many holy people 
preparatory to the resurrection of their 
bodies three days afterward, simultaneously 
with, or soon after, the rising of His own 
body. Another incident, quite singular, is, 
that when they came to Calvary and before 
attaching Jesus to the cross, they offered Him 
wine mingled with gall, according to Mat- 



47 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

thew, or wine mingled with myrrh, accord- 
ing to Mark ; this was an unprecedented act, 
and may proper^ first claim our attention. 

It is very certain that the chief priests and 
scribes were the ruling and directing powers 
through all the pitiless scenes of that day 
from the beginning at the house of Annas, 
during all the mockery before Pilate, and at 
Calvary till the close of the tragedy. These 
easily swayed the wicked and abandoned 
rabble to do whatever they suggested; this 
draught of wine, therefore, was provided by 
their direction, and it may be taken for grant- 
ed that it was brought there to be offered to 
Jesus from no kindly or merciful motive. 
What, then, were the motives ? We may first 
review a few facts precedent. Our Lord had 
reached the hill of Calvary in a very faint 
and weary condition ; He ha.d been without 
rest or sleep all the night, had passed through 
an experience very exhausting to soul and 
body in the garden of Gethsemane,had taken 
no breakfast, and no meal the night previous 



48 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

except that light one of the passover with its 
bitter herbs ; yet with all this His mind was 
clear, and His voice strong to utter all His 
thought. Just now, at nine o'clock, was a 
critical time for the chief priests and scribes ; 
they could attach Him to the cross, but there 
might be danger of a rescue by His country 
friends abiding in the city just after cele- 
bration of the Passover. These were in such 
overwhelming numbers as to be able to over- 
awe and overpower resistance coming from 
any quarter that would try to prevent a 
forcible rescue of Jesus from the cross ; and if 
they were to come to Calvary in any great 
numbers, but few words of appeal would be 
needed from His mouth to induce them to 
take such action. To close that mouth, there- 
fore, seemed to them a most needful measure ; 
an offer of wine with myrrh before being 
placed on the cross might lead Him to think 
they gave it to Him out of pity for His ex- 
hausted state, and that they would not offer 
Him the usual vinegar and gall after He had 



49 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

been placed there ; and so, when thirst and 
fever should come upon Him, He would, in 
His confused state, the more willingly take 
the latter drink, deceived by the thought that 
it was the same pleasant wine and myrrh 
offered Him before. 

But the Divine Man knew how "they thus 
reasoned within their hearts," and so, "when 
He had tasted thereof He would not drink ; " 
not that He desired a rescue, for He knew 
that the darkness and earthquake soon to 
come would so bewilder all men, friends and 
foes alike, that little or no thought would, by 
the mass of them, be given to any one of 
those three crucified on Calvary. 

No stress is to be laid on the difference 
between Matthew and Mark, the former giv- 
ing the ante-crucifixion drink as wine and gall 
in place of wine and myrrh ; the mixture of 
vinegar and gall always regularly provided 
at crucifixions to be given during the hours of 
night to hush the cries of the crucified was 
also at hand, and it would be natural for 



50 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

Matthew, having written his Gospel (as it is 
said) after Mark's was written, to have be- 
come confused in his recollection as to the two 
kinds of drink, and make the unimportant 
mistake of putting gall for myrrh. 

The darkness and earthquake may now 
claim attention, both supernatural events. 
The darkness was ordered in the loving coun- 
sel of the Heavenly Father doubtless for two 
purposes; the first, that which has been 
already noted, to turn men's minds away 
from thought of rescuing Jesus, and the 
second, to cover His head in the day of battle 
from the heat of the noon-tide sun, that so in 
the cool darkness, no weakness or trouble of 
the afflicted and fevered body might cloud or 
disturb His intellect, nor any disorder of the 
brain come in to hinder Him in the awful con- 
flict with the powers of hell. 

The earthquake was sent in order that the 
graves of those saints appointed for this 
miracle might be seen and proved by many 
witnesses to have been opened by no human 



51 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

hand, so that during the three days interven- 
ing before the resurrection of Jesus, the re- 
markable fact might be established beyond 
doubt by those who, in that time, should 
have examined those same riven tombs, that 
their occupants had actually come forth after 
Jesus himself had risen, and that they "had 
entered into the holy city, and had appeared 
unto many." 

The recorded words of Jesus spoken while 
on the cross, were uttered after the darkness 
came; before that, the air was filled with 
mockings and jibes by the chief priests and 
the abandoned crew whom they led and in- 
spired; and our Lord would prefer, on His 
part, to maintain that silence which ever be- 
comes the innocent in the face of a horde of 
unjust and malicious, but powerful and suc- 
cessful, accusers. But when the noonday 
darkness came over the land, the appalled and 
cowardly mob passed quickly off the scene, 
and only the vengeful leaders, the near rela- 
tives and friends, with the four soldiers and 



52 



OF CRUCIFIXIOM. 

centurion on duty were left as His compan- 
ions there; these soldiers, stolid and brutal 
as ever under their iron discipline, had been, 
by instigation of the rulers (who all the 
morning had been fearing a rescue), offering 
the vinegar and gall, contrary to the usual 
custom, during the time of broad daylight, 
but now, in the darkness, and when Jesus had 
sent forth the cry, "My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me?" these soldiers, under- 
standing none of the Aramaic language in 
which it was uttered, conceived it to be of the 
same sort of disordered raving they had so 
often heard on the crucifixion field ; and so we 
read the very natural statement that one of 
them, without prompting from any one, did 
according to the usual custom, ran to offer 
Him the abominable stuff that should close 
His throat and stifle His voice. But the cu- 
riosity of the ignorant leaders, who knew not 
the tenor of Jesus ' words, forestalled the offer 
of the drink, "Let be, let us see whether 
Elijah cometh to take Him down ; " and thus 



53 



THE ROMAN MBTHOD 

the power of speech was, tinder the Father's 
providence, preserved to Jesus, that He might 
utter His last ever memorable words. The 
chief priests and scribes had always taught 
that Elijah must first come before the Messiah, 
and if he were actually to come now and at 
this call, Jesus would have furnished himself 
the proof, to them, of the falsity of His claim 
totheMessiahship,fornow Elijah comes after 
Him, whereas he should come before. 

Soon the appointed moment came for Him 
to close the mournful scene; " there was set 
there a vessel full of vinegar; " this was the 
common, sour, cheap wine such as the sol- 
diers could afford to have as a regular drink ; 
this vessel of vinegar (of course without 
either gall or myrrh) was there as provided 
for themselves, when, having completed the 
task of execution, and with a long, idle day 
before them, " sitting down, they watched 
Him there/ ' as they had often done before at 
similar scenes ; thus with the means for play- 
ing games of chance, and with a cheap sour 



54 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

drink each crucifixion party passed each hot, 
monotonous day of their watch. 

Our Lord now, in order that His vocal 
organs might be for an instant clear and 
strong, invited the drink by the words, "I 
thirst; " there was no delirium in His speech, 
and the centurion, seeing it really a case of 
thirst, doubtless bade the soldiers give Him 
the vinegar; he was obeyed; and then, with 
soul fully relieved and resigned, Jesus cried 
with a loud voice, ' ' It is finished, Father, into 
thy hands I commit my spirit,' ' and having 
so said, He bowed His head and yielded up 
His spirit. The centurion was amazed : 
through all his long experience in crucifix- 
ions, he had never known a similar case; the 
earthquake and the darkness might have 
impressed him, although he had known and 
felt such before, but here was a man pray- 
ing for his murderers, silent under the scorn- 
ful taunts of his enemies, innocent of crime, as 
Pilate, his own general, had testified ; and yet 
he had declared himself forsaken of God; after 



55 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

all these mutually contradictory events, came 
the astounding climax of the man's death 
after having been but six hours on the cross ! 
" Truly, this man was a Son of God!" was 
the cry of the pagan centurion, in whose 
system of belief a Son of God was a demi- 
god, a man endowed by the principal gods 
with irresistible power over some particular 
forces in the celestial or earthly realm. 

But what was the cause of our Lord's death 
at so early a period in His execution? We 
have already seen that victims would remain 
alive on the cross for many days, yet here 
was one dying when but the fourth part of 
one day had elapsed. There was no natural 
reason for the death at the end of six hours. 
Jesus was in the prime and vigor of full man- 
hood, in perfect health, with constitution un- 
impaired ; under the operation of the natural 
laws of life, He might be kept on the cross 
and live for three or four days at the least : 
the recorded cases of endurance and survival 
of the crucified leave no doubt to us on this 



56 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

point. The death of our Lord, therefore, 
must be considered miractilous. The most 
notable solution of the problem hitherto 
offered, is that which attributes His death to 
rupture of the heart, the result of, and climax 
to a period of intense agony of mind, and the 
one circumstance on which this conclusion is 
predicated is that of the final cry, " He cried 
with a loud voice, and yielded up his spirit/ ' 
But before treating of this event, let us con- 
sider some incidents connected with the post- 
mortem conditions. Joseph of Arimathea, 
having learned, probably from John, that 
Jesus was really dead, went to Pilate and 
asked for the body, his request being made 
about the same time but possibly a little be- 
fore that of the chief priests and Pharisees, 
that the three bodies should be taken down 
and not suffered to remain on the crosses over 
night; they preferred this request in compli- 
ance with that injunction left them by Moses, 
and recorded in Deut. xxi. 22. 23. To Pilate 
also, the news of Jesus' death was unexpect- 



57 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

ed; lie doubted the truth of the report, but 
when it was confirmed by the centurion, the 
request of Joseph was granted, involving as 
it did a compliance with that of the chief 
priests. 

Great credit must be given to Joseph of 
Arlmathea for his clear-sighted shrewdness in 
forestalling the enemies of Jesus by his own 
request ; for if these latter had obtained His 
body, they assuredly would not have left it 
unbroken and sound; that their disappoint- 
ment was extreme was evidenced by the fact 
of their second request made to Pilate for a 
watch to be kept over the body in the tomb ; 
urging for it the very natural reason that He, 
a deceiver, having prophesied while yet alive, 
that he would be raised from the dead the 
third day, his disciples, to carry out the deceit 
and to fulfil the prophecy, would steal away 
His body. 

But under this hollow pretence was con- 
cealed their real fear, the fear that this death, 
occurring so early, beyond any reason or pre- 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

cedent, might after all be simulated or might 
be a fainting fit, due to a temporary exhaus- 
tion, and that when he had been concealed in 
a tomb which was in the care and keeping of 
his friends, he might soon, under the influence 
of restoratives, be brought back to conscious- 
ness; so they "made the sepulchre sure, the 
guard being with them;" that guard was 
placed there to prevent any one from going in 
rather than to hinder the occupant from com- 
ing out ; for, if the former contingency were 
to happen, then indeed as they declared, the 
last error of leaving a body with unbroken 
legs in the hands of its friends would have 
been worse than the first error of not hav- 
ing had its bones broken before being taken 
from the cross. Indeed, it was of the ut- 
most consequence to these powerful enemies 
of our Lord, that he should never come down 
from the cross in a sound condition: for 
think, for a moment, of the cool diabolism 
involved in all their plans : during the early 
morning they were leading the dissolute mob 



59 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



in the demand to " crucify Him," and all 
that while, they knew that Jesus, if cruci- 
fied, must not remain on the cross after six 
o'clock of the same day; feeling therefore cer- 
tain that He would be alive at that time, they 
were equally certain that according to the 
rigid and unvarying Roman practice, His 
legs would be broken ; thus, during all the six 
hours of the crucifixion, they were so confi- 
dent of this result, and felt so secure of the 
success of their conspiracy, that they still led 
on and incited the mob in their cries, u Let 
Christ, the King of Israel, now come down 
from the cross, that we may see and believe ; " 
" He saved others, Himself He cannot save; 
let Him come down and we will believe ;" 
" Thou that destroyest the temple and build- 
est it in three days, save thyself. ' ' The break- 
ing of the legs was the one result confidently 
reckoned on in all their venemous calcula- 
tions; for then He might be delivered alive 
and without protest to His friends and rela,- 
tives ; if He should then die, His body would 



60 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

bear the marks of dishonoring crime in the 
broken limbs ; but if He survived, it would be 
as a cripple maimed for life ; He would be a 
wretched burden to Himself and friends dur- 
ing many and helpless years of lingering pain. 
Here would be the triumph of the priestly 
adversaries ; no more would He pass through 
cities and villages teaching and preaching His 
abominable doctrines ; if ever able again to 
walk, no one would ever listen to Him ; for it 
was a law, if not written, yet sanctioned by 
universal maxim, that any mind, to be sound 
and entitled to teach sound precepts to others, 
must be housed in a sound body ; thus dis- 
credited, and His person ever proclaiming its 
own dishonor in the sight of all men, His mis- 
sion as a teacher and leader must come to an 
end. 

They were dumbfounded at the untimely 
and incomprehensible decea.se of Jesus at so 
early a stage of the execution ; their plot was 
by it entirely defeated, their plans altogether 
foiled ; this impostor who had so plainly said 

6x 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



to all the world that after three days in death 
he would rise again, was now about to be 
put in the tomb with unviolated bod}^ and 
that too, in the charge and custody of his 
friends ; nothing now was easier than for His 
disciples, if the tomb were left unwatched and 
they thus unhindered, to enter at the right 
appointed moment, bring Him forth, and de- 
clare that He had risen from the dead ; so the 
guard was set, and we all know with what 
futile result. They were brave and effective 
enough against human invaders of the tomb, 
but fled from the presence of one of the heav- 
enly host. 

John, in his record, lays special emphasis 
upon this omission to break the legs as posi- 
tive evidence of the fact that Jesus was really 
dead ; and also puts like emphasis upon the 
other singular appearance, that of the blood 
and water following the spear thrust in His 
side, and he three times reiterates the credi- 
bility of his own testimony — " and he that 
hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness 



62 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

is true ; and he knoweth that he saith true, 
that ye might believe.' ' That omission to 
break the legs John regarded as proof posi- 
tive of the actual death of Jesus and that He 
was not in any faint or trance. And the 
blood and water from the wound was ad- 
duced as proof of the unusual nature of His 
death ; for in the body of the ordinary victim 
dying on the cross after days of exhaustion 
from maceration and fever, the blood would 
by slow degrees be wasted, the heart would 
grow weaker as vitality day by day receded ; 
and as the end drew near, it would throb ever 
more slowly and intermittingly, until at the 
last, its final pulsations might be hardly de- 
tected ; it is evident that with the blood being 
daily appropriated in maintaining and repair- 
ing the wasting tissues, little or none of it 
would remain in any artery or vein of the 
starved-out sufferer, and then a spear thrust 
into the body would elicit little or no blood 
at all. But out of the wound in Jesus' side 
came blood and water. Tlmt decomposed 



63 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

state could only exist in the case of a person 
dying as miraculously as did Jesus, when the 
heart in full and regular action would in an 
instant come to a complete stop ; so that the 
blood in its flow would be at once arrested, 
being kept in the arteries and veins, and in 
the lungs also and liver. The blood, how- 
ever, in this condition, would at once begin 
to separate into its different parts as above 
indicated. 

In all cases of the death of ordinary mor- 
tals the last contraction of the heart is made 
with great force in such wise as to expel 
all blood from the main arteries and drive 
it into the terminal capillary vessels. But 
no such contraction took place in our Sav- 
iour's heart, it suddenly stopped in obedience 
to His will, the arrested blood stood still 
in every artery and vein ; and thus the spear 
when soon afterward thrust into His side, 
whether it entered the lungs or liver, would 
find the blood just beginning to separate in- 
to its component parts, the serum and 
coagulum. 

6 4 



or CRUCIFIXION. 

John, if he could have had the knowl- 
edge of physiology we possess, would have 
written it: " There came out the decom- 
posed blood ; that is, the thick, dark-red 
coagulum, and the colorless white serum ; " 
and he mentions it to establish the fact 
of the strange and unusual nature of our 
Lord's departure ; a parting from life entirely 
inconsistent, by any possibility, with the 
worn-out and impoverished condition attend- 
ant upon slow starvation. He also refers to 
the passage contained in the thirty-fourth 
psalm ; one like many others serving both as 
a song of praise by its writer, and as a pro- 
phetic condensed biography of our Saviour: 
so also does he quote from the twenty- 
second psalm and from the twelfth chapter 
of Zechariah which in like manner set forth 
the soul experiences of their writers as well 
as the prophecies concerning the anointed 
and suffering Messiah. That is, without 
doubt, a very strained interpretation which 
would make the words of 1 John v. 6, 8, 



65 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

" water and blood/' to mean the white serum 
and red fibrine that came from Jesus' body ; 
such symbolism is inaccurate, inelegant and 
irreverent; serum is not water merely, but 
contains albumen and other elements of the 
blood ; and the red fibrine is not blood, but 
only a portion of the blood. A much happier 
exegesis of that passage is that which sees in 
the water of baptism in which Jesus came, 
the cleansing and purifying influence He exerts 
upon the believer's heart ; which sees also in 
the blood in which Jesus came, the life He 
gave for us and by which, continually filling 
our souls with it, He saves us. 

The inquiry may now be resumed, that of 
the death of our Saviour so unexpected, when 
He had been but six hours on the cross. The 
theory of a broken heart does not well ex- 
plain all the circumstances. Heart rupture 
can occur only in company with, and as 
caused by, extreme mental distress or agony 
of soul, continued during an extended period 
of days ; there is no evidence in all the Gospel 



66 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

records, of any such extreme trouble of mind 
in our Lord; in all cases of this disease in 
modern records, there has been, during some 
days prior to death, such wandering or rath- 
er eclipse of the intellectual powers as to put 
the patient in a kind of stupor, or render him 
partly incapable of mental exertion ; the cor- 
roding sorrow has forbidden thought and 
benumbed the faculties. But our Lord, dur- 
ing days and weeks prior to crucifixion, was 
of the same calm, even-minded, self-contained, 
rational deportment as during all former 
days of His ministry; in all His ways and 
words and works there appears no token of 
an unbalanced or even of an unquiet spirit, 
not excepting even the night in Gethsemane. 
In every scene through which during the last 
three days he so rapidly passed, and whether 
in an active or passive mood, His words and 
demeanor evince the high and calm control 
He had ever exercised over His own spirit and 
over the minds of all who saw and heard 
Him; and during the six hours on the 



67 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



cross, His words to all around indicated a 
quiet repose of heart and self-possession, an 
utter absence of all distress ; He spake to the 
penitent thief the appropriate words of hope 
and pardon ; He gave His sorrowing mother 
into the care of the beloved disciple; there 
was capacity in His soul for the exercise of 
pure and gentle love, both divine and human, 
to the penitent thief by the forgiving God, to 
the mother by the dutiful and considerate 
son ; no one, suffering such dire extremity of 
distress as must end in a broken heart, could 
ever have demeaned himself so rationally and 
tranquilly up to and including the last 
moment of life. In fact, if such distress ex- 
isted, it is astonishing that the synoptists 
give no intimation anywhere in the story, 
that our Lord suffered any anguish of body 
or mind while on the cross ; and John, having 
those Gospels before him when writing his 
own thirty or forty years after theirs, and 
who would be certain to supply so important 
an omission, not only makes no mention of 



68 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

pain or suffering, but even omits the one sad 
plaint offered up by our Lord to the God who 
had forsaken Him. 

Another hindrance to our trust in the theory 
of a broken heart, is in the fact that the last 
cry He gave forth, and which, in the view of 
the advocates of that theory is most relied 
on for its proof, was a cry with a loud voice; 
but the cry of extreme distress and anguish 
has no voice; however loud and piercing it 
may be, it is yet inarticulate ; the culminating 
agony is too bitter, too deep, too sudden at 
the instant the heart is torn open, to permit 
any form of expression more defined than a 
shrill, terrific shriek ; but the last cry of our 
Saviour was in clearly-spoken, intelligent 
words, "It is finished, Father, into Thy 
hands I commit my spirit; " they indicate a 
mind unincumbered by any pressure of bodily 
or soul distress, and prove the possession of 
all natural faculties in their normal and un- 
troubled operation. 

We have seen that the victim was, by the 

69 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

Roman mode of crucifixion, put to very little 
actual bodily pain; lie was suspended by 
ropes that allowed free circulation of blood, 
and would afford him all the ease consistent 
with such a position; he was wounded by 
nails through hands and feet, but only because 
they were customary and actually nec- 
essary to secure him; if the hands and feet 
were suffered to rest quietly as attached, the 
little of blood that flowed from the wounds 
soon coagulated and stopped any further 
flow. We have also seen that the care of the 
executioners for a confinement that involved 
little suffering from suspensory or traumatic 
causes, was not prompted by a sentiment of 
mercy or kindness, but solely with the intent 
to insure the more extended and intense 
suffering attendan t on the long-drawn agonies 
of starvation. When the appointed moment 
drew near, for the yielding up of His spirit, it 
is reasonably certain that the strength and 
vigor of Jesus were in no sensible degree 
abated, and that His mind had been in no 



70 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

wise affected by the six hours' duration of 
the punishment; "the sun had not burned 
Him by day," for the cool darkness had 
shielded Him, and arrested any ill effects from 
thirst or fever ; we cannot, consistently with 
any fair inference, ascribe His death at the 
ninth hour to exhaustion produced by either 
mental or soul torture, nor to any bodily suf- 
fering resulting from the crucifixion. What, 
then, caused His early death, so unexpected 
to every one ? We are, by a broad considera- 
tion of every view of the case, shut up to the 
one answer, which is, that Jesus, in the ex- 
ercise of a right and power, both specially 
given Him, of His own will terminated His 
own life; He was the only being of human 
mould ever authorized and empowered to 
effect the separation of his own soul from his 
own body, and in John's Gospel, ch. x. vss. 
17, 18, is to be found the clear statement of 
that fact. "Therefore doth my Father love 
me, because I lay down my life that I might 
take it again. No man taketh it from me, 



71 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

but I lay it down of myself. I have power 
(e|ov9ta) to lay it down, and I have power to 
take it again. This commandment received I 
from my Father.' ' These are statements too 
strong and explicit to be construed in any 
other than their most direct, positive and 
literal meaning, and that meaning acquires 
great emphasis by the sets of double repeti- 
tions employed. "I lay down my life, — no 
man taketh it from me." " I lay it down of 
myself, — I have power to lay it down." "I 
take my life again, — I have power to take it 
again." "I received this commandment (to 
lay down and to take again) from my 
Father." No declaration could express more 
clearly and distinctly the original and com- 
plete control by our dear Master over His 
own human life, nor can they possibly imply 
a mere passive, permissive, unresisting tolera- 
tion of the murderous designs of His enemies; 
they signify a deliberate act originating in 
His own will and executed on His own re- 
sponsibility ; every deed was done "of him- 



72 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

self; " He lay down His life when He chose, 
He took it again when He chose, and that 
choice was made in the right way, at the 
right time, and with a definite purpose in 
view. These words would have recalled 
what many of those then present had doubt- 
less heard Him say a little while before, " I go 
my way, and ye shall seek me and shall die in 
your sins; whither I go ye cannot come." 
and then the query rose in their gross and 
sensual minds and came from their lips, " Will 
he kill himself? " because he saith, " whither I 
go ye cannot come? " Thus with the former 
sayings coupled with these latter words, they 
thought they had from Him the abhorrent 
declaration, that He had been specially per- 
mitted by heaven to commit suicide and 
afterward to take His guilty soul back into 
His dishonored body ; this appeared to them 
so monstrous and fantastic that the only 
admissible explanation seemed to be, "He 
hath a demon and is mad, why hear ye him? " 
That was the scornful accusation and depre- 



73 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



cation on the one side, but the sufficient 
rebuttal of them came from the other side, 
" But this demon was so good and powerful 
as to open the eyes of the blind; surely, no 
insane words can come forth from the lips of 
one so accredited from Heaven; He is from 
God and must and does speak the truth, even 
if we do not altogether understand it." 

The final words that accompanied the 
death of Jesus are most significant. Although 
there are affirmations in abundance in all the 
New Testament that Christ was put to death 
by the Jews, and although Jesus himself had 
declared that the chief priests and scribes 
would conspire against and kill Him, yet His 
last words are as far as possible from sug- 
gesting such an effect as resulting from such 
a cause ; the words are not such as would be 
uttered by a human sufferer, calling on men 
to bear witness to his innocence and protest- 
ing against such a bitter and undeserved tak- 
ing of his life. Throughout all the pitiful 
scene there was no hint or suggestion offered 



74 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

in expostulation against the disgrace of a 
criminal's death ; but all is submissive acqui- 
escence. Every statement, therefore, of the 
Acts, the Epistles and Gospels in which the 
enemies of Christ are named as the agents 
and actors in causing His death, is to be 
taken as implying and measuring their wicked 
and murderous intent; at heart they were 
His murderers, and their every act was done 
to carry into effect the guilty purposes of 
their hearts. These last words of Jesus have 
thus no reference to pain of body, to regret 
over loss of His life, to the rancor and hate 
that have brought Him blameless to an un- 
timely end; but they are altogether as the 
words of one who consciously had supreme 
and kingly control over His own life, either 
to retain or to give it up. "Into thy hands 
I commend, irapariOefjiai, my spirit" (Luke). 
This is not an expression to come forth from 
the soul of one bitterly afflicted, laden with 
grief and going unwillingly out of life. Far 
from that, it indicates a rational and intelli- 



75 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



gent purpose, a deliberate act proceeding in a 
well-advised and chosen way ; under no pos- 
sible construction could they represent Jesus 
as going to His end in a passive or protesting 
attitude of mind; on the contrary, they re- 
veal an intent insistent and facile, a conclu- 
sion reached by well-ordered thought. Our 
blessed Lord, the Lord of both life and death, 
consciously and by the single operation of 
His own will, separated His own soul from 
His own body ; and for this He had received 
a special permission (" commandment ") from 
His Father. The time had come for that act, 
His work was finished, as He declared, and 
therefore it was needless for Him to remain 
on the cross any longer. 

His enemies had placed Him upon that 
cross for the one purpose of most cruel bodily 
torment; but such was not by any means 
His purpose nor that of His Heavenly Father 
in permitting Him to be put there. No mere 
suffering of the body, however slight, how- 
ever severe, had any place in the economy of 



76 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

redemption ; no mortal torture, whether mild 
or excruciating, ever wrought for the least ef- 
fect in the reconciliation of our souls through 
Jesus unto God. Serene and placid, our Sav- 
iour left His body, as if it were a garment He 
needed not for the present to wear ; He left it, 
not by constraint, nor for relief from suffer- 
ing, but for the purpose of demonstrating the 
possibility of reunion with that body glori- 
fied, and thus, after Him, of the reunion of 
all saints with their glorified bodies. The 
words also of the New Testament writers 
testify to the deliberation and calmness of 
this putting off: " He breathed forth, e^eirvev- 
aev (Mark and Luke) . " He gave forth, a^rjfcev, 
the spirit ' ' (Matt) . " He delivered up, irapeS- 
co/cev, the spirit" (John). 



77 



IReflecttons- 



If what is thus far written may be deemed 
valid, as founded upon legitimate reasoning, 
then there are certain conclusions naturally 
to be drawn. One is, that our Lord suffered 
comparatively little pain from His confine- 
ment to the cross ; the manner of fastening in 
Hiscase,as in the cases of all others, was such 
as to inflict the minimum of suffering consist- 
ent with the retention of the body on the 
cross; but He was favored above all others 
ever crucified, in escaping the unshaded heat 
of the sun, with the mental disorder it would 
have caused. The pain and discomfort were 
the least He could undergo with that kind of 
punishment and for the short time He en- 
dured it. The very proceedings regularly 
followed for making this kind of execution, in 
all cases one of extremest cruelty, were those 



78 



OP CRUCIFIXION. 

actually conducive to the least suffering in 
His case. The physical pain He suffered most 
arose from the wounds in hands and feet, yet 
if He kept them quiet the blood clots that 
soon formed would exclude the air in great 
measure and thus secure nearly full cessation 
from pain. The terrors of crucifixion consist- 
ed in its duration, its hunger-pangs, its delir- 
ium, its slow drain upon the vital powers, its 
exhaustion, long drawn out, of blood and 
nerves and strength. Our Lord knew none 
of these ; at the ninth hour, His bodily condi- 
tion, except as to His wounds, was as good 
as at the third hour ; and it was only at that 
last hour that the first of the symptoms due 
to crucifixion appeared, being announced in 
His own words, " I thirst.' ' He hung on that 
cross quietly during the six hours, not for the 
sa,ke of any bodily pain, but for another more 
awful and grander purpose, awful in its ter- 
rible experiences and inexpressibly grand in 
its results. 

In the growing tendencies of our time to 



79 



THE ROMAN METHOD 

multiply images of the cross and of the cruci- 
fixion, and to observe the anniversary of 
Jesus' death with religious ceremonies more 
or less elaborate, the liability is ever toward 
an increasing regard of His supposed physi- 
cal sufferings while on the cross, and toward 
attributing to these some efficient agency in 
the propitiation made for the sins of the 
whole world. We must turn our backs con- 
stantly and resolutely upon such a deadly 
error. 

Indeed, the events of Calvary have come to 
be viewed so generally through eyes of senti- 
ment or through feelings of sympathy for 
mere mortal anguish, vaguely assumed as 
having been endured by our Saviour, that 
attention has been drawn off from, and there 
is danger of an utter forgetting of, the fact 
that expiation and reconciliation were made 
on the cross through death (not annihila- 
tion) of the soul of Jesus, and not through 
any corporeal agony. There is reason for 
believing that our popular Protestant theol- 



8q 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 



ogy, or rather our religious practice, has 
been deeply infected by that Roman Catholic 
spirit and practice in which the physical suf- 
ferings attributed to our Lord are assigned a 
prominent, if not the larger part in the work 
of expiation and redemption. The galleries 
of the Old World abound in paintings and 
statuary representing what the artists sup- 
posed to be true of the events of the crucfix- 
ion day. They have to do with all that 
could be imagined always of the painful, 
often of the horrible and revolting, and some- 
times of the grotesque; but all of them, in 
the light of what has here been written, are 
grossly untrue. Copies in colors, in print or 
photograph of these false but attractive 
works of art have been distributed in count- 
less numbers throughout the Protestant 
peoples of both continents, and their influ- 
ence upon Christian thought and culture has 
been anything but good and wholesome. On 
this subject, nothing more appropriate could 
be said than the following by John Ruskin : 



81 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



" Therefore, of all subjects that can be ad- 
mitted to sight, the expressions of fear and 
ferocity are the most foul and detestable; 
and so there is in them I know not what 
sympathetic attractiveness, for minds cow- 
ardly and base, as the vulgar of most na- 
tions ; and as they are easily rendered by men 
who can render nothing else, they are often 
trusted by the herd of painters incapable and 
profane, as in that monstrous abortion of 
the first room of the Louvre, called the 
Deluge, whose subject is pure, acute, mortal 
fear; and so generally, in the senseless hor- 
rors of the modern French schools, spawn of 
the guillotine And manifold in- 
stances of the same feeling are to be found in 
the repainting of the various representations 
of the Inferno, so common through Italy; 

so in the Inferno of Santa Maria 

Novella, and of the Arena chapel, not to 
speak of the horrible images of the Passion, 
by which vulgar Romanism has always striv- 
en to excite the languid sympathies of its un- 



82 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

taught flocks. Of which foulnesses let us 
reason no further, the very image and mem- 
ory of them being pollution; only noticing 
this, that there has always been a morbid 
tendency in Romanism toward the contem- 
plation of bodily pain, owing to the attribu- 
tion of saving power to it; which, like any 
other moral error, has been of fatal effect in 
art, leaving not altogether without the stain 
and blame of it even the highest of the Ro- 
manist painters, as Fra Angelico for instance, 
who, in his Passion subjects, always insists 
weakly on the bodily torture and is unspar- 
ing of blood; and Giotto, etc.," (Modern 
Painters, Part III, Sec. I, Chap.xiv., K29). 

From such representations in art, therefore, 
there is much of evil to be apprehended 
through the defilement and debasement of 
our evangelical principles, and it is to be 
feared that this morbid sympathy for a suf- 
fering that never was endured by our Saviour 
maybe productive of serious and wide-spread 
error among the masses in our Protestant 
churches. 

83 



THE ROMAN METHOD 



The cross did not mean for Jesus either the 
common death of men or any severe suffering, 
but only shame; and He endured it, despis- 
ing, not death nor suffering, but the shame of 
it. The moral and social status of the worst 
criminal ever attached to a cross could not 
have been, by law or custom, fixed lower 
than that assigned to our pure and innocent 
Master when Pilate delivered Him to the 
chief priests, and bid them do with Him as 
they desired. The rule declared by our Elder 
Brother, that ;< he that humbleth himself 
shall be exalted " applies to Him also; for 
since He humbled Himself and became obedi- 
ent even to the death of the cross, therefore 
God highly exalted Him, to give Him a name 
that is above every name. Thus, by the cross 
of shame, of hate, contempt and ignominy, 
the lowest of all men may be brought close in 
fellowship to our Master's side, and may, as 
was the penitent thief, be assured of being 
some day with Him in Paradise. 

The death He suffered was death of the 



3 4 



OF CRUCIFIXION. 

soul, the awful second death ; and we must 
believe that in order to know how to redeem 
men from that, it was the death of a lost hu- 
man soul He experienced during the three 
hours of darkness on the cross ! Over such a 
death, how glorious the triumph, how un- 
speakably great the victory ! It was a small 
thing for Him to return after three days to 
the body in Joseph's tomb, but it was the 
Mighty God of the universe whose soul was 
brought up from that awful death which He 
tasted for every man. It was for this that 
God had ages ago given Him the assurance of 
both kinds of resurrection; the resurrection 
of His soul, that it should not be left in hell ; 
the resurrection of His body, that it should 
not see corruption. His soul, made sin for 
us, and under the wrath of, because forsaken 
by, His God, met and overcame all the powers 
of hell, and thereby made sure our souls' vic- 
tory over the same death, the same hell. 

But the subject now opens very widely, and 
further discussion of it may properly be de- 
ferred. 

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